Fritz Kreisler

Fritz Kreisler (February 2, 1875 – January 29, 1962) was an Austrian-American violinist and composer. He was among the most celebrated violin virtuosos of his era, famous for a sweet tone and expressive phrasing that relied heavily on portamento and rubato. Like many top violinists of his time, he had a signature sound that was instantly identifiable. While his style was largely rooted in the Franco-Belgian school, it also evoked the cozy, gemütlich atmosphere of pre-World War I Vienna.

Kreisler was born in Vienna to Anna and Samuel Kreisler, a doctor. Though of Jewish descent, he was baptized at twelve. He entered the Vienna Conservatory at age seven, studying under Anton Bruckner, Jakob Dont, and Joseph Hellmesberger Jr. From 1885 to 1887, he studied composition and violin at the Paris Conservatory with teachers including Léo Delibes, Lambert Massart, and Jules Massenet. At twelve, he graduated with the top Premier Prix in violin, beating forty other competitors, most of whom were at least twenty. He made his U.S. debut at Steinway Hall in New York on November 10, 1888, and toured the country in 1888–1889 with Moriz Rosenthal. After returning to Austria, he applied for a spot in the Vienna Philharmonic but was rejected by concertmaster Arnold Rosé. This led him to leave music temporarily to study medicine. He also spent a short time in the army before returning to the violin in 1899, performing with the Berlin Philharmonic under Arthur Nikisch. That concert, along with American tours from 1901 to 1903, brought him real fame. He was also an excellent pianist, and his piano playing survives on Ampico reproducing piano rolls.

During a 1901 U.S. tour, Kreisler met Harriet Lies, a New York-born divorcée, Vassar graduate, and daughter of a German American tobacco merchant. They fell in love immediately and married a year later, though legal technicalities forced them to repeat the ceremony three more times. They had no children, and Harriet devoted herself to his career. They were married for sixty years, until his death. In 1910, Kreisler premiered Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto, which was commissioned for and dedicated to him. He served briefly in the Austrian Army during World War I but was honorably discharged after being wounded. He arrived in New York on November 24, 1914, and stayed in America for the rest of the war. He returned to Europe in 1924, living first in Berlin, then moving to France in 1938. At the outbreak of World War II, he settled again in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1943. He lived there for the rest of his life, giving his last public concert in 1947 and broadcasting performances for a few years after. On April 26, 1941, he was hit by a truck while crossing a New York street, suffering a fractured skull and spending over a week in a coma. In later years, he experienced hearing loss and cataracts. He died in New York City in 1962 from a heart condition worsened by old age, and was buried in a private mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

Kreisler composed many violin pieces, including encore solos like "Liebesleid" and "Liebesfreud." Some of his works were pastiches in the style of other composers, originally attributed to Gaetano Pugnani, Giuseppe Tartini, and Antonio Vivaldi. In 1935, he revealed he had written them himself. When critics complained, he replied that they had already deemed the pieces worthy: "The name changes, the value remains." He also wrote operettas, including *Apple Blossoms* (1919) and *Sissy* (1932), a string quartet, and cadenzas for concertos by Brahms, Paganini, and Beethoven. His Beethoven cadenzas are the most commonly played today. He wrote the music for the 1936 film *The King Steps Out*, directed by Josef von Sternberg and based on the early years of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. He performed and recorded his own version of the first movement of Paganini’s D major Violin Concerto, rescoring and reharmonizing parts and completely rewriting the orchestral introduction, giving it a late-nineteenth-century feel.

Kreisler owned several antique violins by Stradivari, Pietro Guarneri, Giuseppe Guarneri, and Carlo Bergonzi, most of which later bore his name. He also had a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin from 1860, which he used as a second instrument and often lent to the young prodigy Josef Hassid. In 1952, he donated his Giuseppe Guarneri to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where it is still used for performances. On recordings, his style resembles that of Mischa Elman, with expansive tempos, continuous varied vibrato, expressive phrasing, and a melodic approach to passage-work, along with heavy use of portamento and rubato. Their styles differ more in major works like Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto than in smaller pieces. A visit to a Kreisler concert is described in Siegfried Sassoon’s 1928 autobiographical novel *Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man*. The Australian electronics manufacturer Kriesler (later a Philips subsidiary) supposedly took its name from him.